Prologue
by Ambrosia Rush
Summary: Sometimes what you think is the end is only the prologue. Two part story.
1. These Days

**EDIT: 04/29/13- Thank you to JET1967 for proofreading this story, I really appreciate it :)**

**::**

Special Agent-In-Charge Mike Renko was still getting used to the new title. It had only been a couple of months since he'd changed from an 'on-the-fly' agent who dropped into whatever unit needed his assistance to a team leader. It was Hetty's work. _Obviously_.

As with most other teams, he worked with three other agents and a technical operator. Renko's partner was new not only to OSP but to NCIS in general. Angela Mercer was thirty-one years of age, standing five foot nine. She was all sharp lines, steely grey eyes that made men nervous and copper hair that was _always _styled up in a bun. She had a love for her brown leather boots and dark chocolate leather jacket, which was about as style savvy as she got. The rest of her clothing was a plain long-sleeved shirt in black, grey or white paired up with jeans. She had a past she didn't talk about and a problem with authority figures and taking orders (which included orders from him). She turned out to be the best shot on the team and refused to talk about how she acquired such skill.

Ryan Cooper, who had been the late, previous Special Agent-In-Charge Holden Merlow's partner, was younger than Renko by five years and didn't look like an undercover worker but... that was kind of the point. He was thirty-two and the tallest of the group, standing six-three, with dark brown wavy styled hair, a seemingly ever present five o'clock shadow and dark eyes. Combining all that with distressed jeans and a motorcycle jacket might say 'dangerous' but it didn't say 'fed.'

Last, but certainly not least, was the youngest of the agents at twenty-nine years and the shortest at five foot eight. Noah Faraday looked more like a pencil pushing executive than a federal agent. He had blond hair slightly shorter than Ryan's, was clean-shaven and always dressed in a professional manner that reminded Renko of Nate. Noah seemed too... innocent to be a federal agent. Then again none of the bad guys had ever seen his scores at the gun range nor knew the fact that he was a trained sniper. With his high IQ he could have made a good living as an intelligence analyst but chose to be a field agent instead.

Rounding out the team was Kimi Niigata, their twenty eight year old Japanese-American Technical Operator, who stood five three, with long dark hair with a signature wild streak of colour on the underside (currently electric blue), the sweetest smile on thin lips and light almond eyes. She dressed colourfully and in an eccentric style but had become endeared to the team through it and her bright and warm personality.

They had been on a case of stolen military weaponry. Kimi fed them information about the new meeting place that Cooper had gotten while undercover.

Angela was driving, and she was angry. What about, Renko wasn't too sure. She had seemed permanently pissed since he had first met her two months earlier. She was suspicious of everyone and everything. Though she had saved his ass in a couple of situations with her amazing shots, she then ripped into him about getting into such a mess in the first place.

Renko didn't think she had 'kiddy gloves' either; she'd ripped into a woman who had just lost her husband for information. He'd put her out on the porch and gone back in apologising profusely. Angela had been angry when he'd come out.

"_She's hiding something." Angela had insisted._

"_You think everyone is hiding something. Didn't I tell you not to say anything and let me handle it?" Renko had responded heatedly._

But she never listened. She had problems with authority, including his.

"Do you think this guy is really going to be at the warehouse?" Angela asked, making a turn.

"Cooper says he will be," Renko responded, flipping through the file on his lap.

"And you just trust this at face value?"

He looked over at her. Her profile was stern, hard, her lips in a thin line, her steely grey eyes staring ahead and then flicking to the rearview mirror, vigilant against threats.

"I trust my team," Renko responded defensively. She didn't seem to trust any of them, and that included him, her own partner. He tried not to take it personally. After all, he'd worked with plenty of people with legendary trust issues, but she never let down her iron walls, not even for a second. The most personal thing he'd found out about her was how she took her coffee, _black._

"It seems... wrong."

"Why?" He asked.

Angela always said something was wrong, or that someone was suspicious, but she never explained herself and then seemed annoyed that no one was on the same page as her.

Angela's hand tapped against the wheel to the beat of the song playing on the radio. "The warehouse is under his name," Angela said with a bit of heat, as if to say _'come on, don't you see it?'_ "He's an awful human being, but he isn't stupid." Angela bit her lip, the one thing about her that did look awfully soft.

Renko tore his eyes away. "No stone left unturned."

"Yeah, I know," she responded as she hit her blinker and pulled into a parking spot on the side of the road.

Renko opened the glove box and pulled out a set of binoculars.

"Doesn't mean I have to like it," she muttered under her breath.

He had turned to her, exasperated. Being partnered with her was like trying to take a moody child through a grocery store. "We follow the leads; we do our job," he told her. She looked over at him, her stormy grey eyes locking onto his pale green ones.

There was a shot, and then the windshield was a web of broken glass.

Angela had the car in reverse and was driving it backwards from zero to forty in three seconds flat. "Mike?" It was odd. She always called him Renko. At first he was so shocked he didn't respond. "Michael!" Her voice went up an octave. He'd never heard her have anything other than stern control over everything and everyone. "Michael?" She swerved onto a side street, still driving in reverse. She gave the wheel a hard turn and drove into a parking garage. She slammed the gearshift into 'P' and looked over at him. "Oh, God."

There was a bullet hole in his chest, and he was struggling to breathe.

"You're going to be okay." She had her phone in hand, dialing. "Kimi, get me Lange." Renko wasn't sure how Angela got away with calling Hetty, Lange. Hetty always said she preferred Hetty to Henrietta, or Lange, and yet Angela had yet to even once call the little woman Hetty. "How you doin', Mike?" Her voice was softer than he'd ever heard it. He wanted to hang onto the rich, throaty voice she had. It sounded even more beautiful with her usual barriers down, with a tone other than aggressive anger for a change.

"Okay," he responded, finally forcing the word past his lips. She threw off her jacket and pulled off her long-sleeved grey shirt, leaving her in a white tank top and, for the first time, he saw her arms. She'd worn long sleeves from the first day, and now he saw that she was covering the half-sleeve tattoo on her right arm. He wanted to study it, but his eyes wouldn't focus. She pushed aside his hands and pressed her shirt against the wound.

"Miss Mercer," Hetty's voice finally came through the speaker on the phone.

"Renko's been shot," Angela's voice hardened as she surveyed their current location. "Sniper attack, we were going to the warehouse."

"And where are you now?"

"Parking garage," Angela's voice angry. "The car isn't looking so hot. It took one to the hood and it's smoking. We're lucky it managed to get us to cover."

Renko got his eyes to focus, and, sure enough, through the web of broken glass that was the remainder of the windshield, he saw the smoking hood, ready to catch fire. He hadn't even heard a second shot, only felt the searing pain of the bullet.

"I need to get him medical," Angela said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I'm afraid to move him."

"Kimi's already dispatched the paramedics," Hetty said.

"Discreetly," Angela requested quickly. "I don't want the sniper knowing our location. He or she must know that the target's been hit."

"Hang in there, Mr. Renko," Hetty said before the line disconnected.

"It's going to be all right, Mike," Angela said softly. For a second, he wasn't sure who she was trying to comfort. _Him or her? _"You're going to be okay."

He figured he must be delirious because he swore he saw tears in her eyes, the steely edge ebbing away to leave only a fog of fear and worry. Pain was coursing through his body, and he wondered how he hadn't passed out yet. Her hands were on his chest, his blood coating them, but she wasn't looking at the wound. "Hey!" He looked away from her hands and back up to her face. "Hold on, Mike, hold on!"

She reached out and, in her typical impatience, hit the redial button on her phone, leaving a bloody fingerprint. "Kimi!" she said when the call was answered. "ETA for medical!"

"Almost there, Angela, less than a minute away."

Angela had a foul mouth, and she used every word in the book twice. Had he not been bleeding out, he might have thought it funny.

"Ange?" His voice was tapering off weakly.

"Yeah?" she responded quickly. Her eyes locked onto his, and she bit down on her lip.

"You'll take care of the team," he said, struggling for breath. "Right?"

"Like they'd listen to me," Angela responded with a grimace. "You have to stick around to keep the boys in line." She looked up, hearing a truck pull in, lights and sirens off. She let out a sigh. "They're here, Mike." She turned back, but his eyes were closed and she couldn't feel the hard rise and fall of pained breaths. "Mike?"

::

**The characters Ryan Cooper and Noah Faraday (along with the now deceased Special Agent-In-Charge Holden Merlow) appear in Blood and Bone. That story also has the portion where Renko accepts the promotion from Hetty.**

**Thank you for reading :)**


	2. Angel Of Mercy

**Thanks to JET1967 for proofreading!**

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Mike Renko knew before he opened his eyes that he was in a hospital. The beeps of monitors, the subtle ache in his wrist from the IV, the scent of disinfectant, and the monster ache in his chest from where he knew he'd been shot gave it away. His mouth felt as if he'd eaten sand; his eyes felt heavy but he didn't want to sleep anymore.

He opened his eyes to semi-darkness. It was night out but this was Los Angeles and so there was still a bit of light filtering through the blinds. There was also light given off by the monitors at his bedside. He turned his head. On the other side of the bed sat Hetty with a book, a little light attached. She looked up at him through the lenses of her glasses, a slight smile coming upon her face. "Welcome back, Mr. Renko. You have been missed."

"I didn't go anywhere, Hetty," he argued, more out of habit than anything.

The tiny woman stood and got a cup of water. While following her movements, he saw his partner. Angela Mercer, who stood five-nine, was laying on her side, curled up on two chairs pressed together. She had to be some kind of contortionist for it to be possible. It didn't surprise him that she didn't look restful.

"You're lucky to be alive, Mike," Hetty said quietly. He knew her well enough to know that she only used first names when she was truly worried or expressing a strong emotion about said person.

"Is Ange okay?" He remembered being shot, and her driving them to the safety of a parking garage. He could have sworn there were tears in her eyes but was pretty sure that she would never admit it. He recalled she had tattoos on her arm that he really wanted to get the story behind. He also remembered the worry in her tone that told him she cared more than she let on. But he didn't know what happened after he'd blacked out. What if the gunman had come for her?

"She's fine, tired," Hetty replied as she came back with a plastic cup of water and passed it to him.

He accepted it gratefully and took a blessed sip. "Thanks."

"She's been awake three days waiting for you to come around," Hetty informed him, her wise eyes studying his for his reaction.

He ignored the prying eyes and looked over at his partner. "How the hell does she sleep like that?" Renko had to ask, trying to keep his mind from wandering to the bullet that had shattered glass and embedded itself in his chest.

Hetty shrugged. "Who knows. Your partner is resilient." She sat back down on the metal and plastic chair. "This room has been a busy place. Mr. Callen said to tell you 'welcome to the club'."

Renko snorted. He was one of the lucky ones; this was his _first _time being shot.

Angela began to stir and sat up with a groan. "How's he?" her words slurred with exhaustion.

"He's fine," Renko replied, and she jumped to her feet, the metal legs of the chairs screeching against the floor. She stared at him, and he back at her. They froze, now once again on uncertain ground.

"I'll give you two a minute." Hetty said, standing. She turned her attention to Angela. "Would you like some tea, Miss Mercer?"

"Coffee, black," Angela requested and watched Hetty leave. Only when the door shut did she return her gaze to him. Tentatively, she walked over and stood at his bedside. "Michael?"

He looked up at her and studied her as if it were the first time he was seeing her. Her face was all sharp planes. Her grey eyes were hardened, but her lips looked soft. She looked more like an avenging angel than one of mercy. Angela Mercer, 'Angel of Mercy', she informed the team quickly was a nickname of irony. She'd seen too much to be called 'pretty'; pretty implied innocence. She had too hard lines to her face to be called 'beautiful' by the classical definition, though he supposed if she let her hair down, wore some makeup and dressed to the occasion, she could be a type of 'beautiful'. She was handsome, he decided. Her face was too androgynous, without the highlight of makeup, to be beautiful, but she was good looking in her own way. And behind the hardness in her eyes, he saw her searching for something back in his. Neither quite had the other figured out yet.

Finally, he broke the silence. "You saved my ass." Frankly, he was surprised they had made it out of the situation. Had she not been such a crazy but precise driver they might not have.

"You make some kind of 'guardian angel' joke, and I'll take out your morphine drip." Her face betrayed no emotions. He wasn't sure if she was joking or serious. She was usually deadly serious about everything. Joking wasn't her strong suit. Then again the worry in her steel grey eyes was new, too.

"I'm quite fond of the morphine drip right now, thanks," he said with what he was sure was a dopey grin.

She nodded. "You should sleep."

"I've been sleeping," he responded grumpily. He tried to move and find a more comfortable spot, but that only served to send jolts of pain throughout his body and he groaned. Her hand gripped his hard, in a way he assumed was supposed to be comforting. At least her vice grip had him forgetting the pain of a bullet wound.

"Should I call a doctor?" She asked.

"Nah," he responded. "I'm fine."

"Bullshit!" Her face was stone serious.

"You find the sniper?"

"No."

"Have you been looking?" He knew full well she'd been with him the entire time. Hetty had told him as much, but he wondered if she would admit to it.

"Cooper and Faraday are working on it." He knew she was avoiding telling him outright that she'd stayed by his side.

"And you?" He prodded, which, knowing Angela, was a dangerous thing to do. Still, he was pretty sure she wouldn't pull the morphine.

She pulled her hand away, crossed her arms over her chest in a defensive manner and leaned against the wall. "Security detail."

"Looked to me like you were sleeping."

Something had changed. From the moment he was shot he'd been getting glimpses beyond her hardened mask. The mask was back now, fully in place. "Hetty was here." In her voice was a dare, daring him to question Hetty's abilities. He smartly said nothing.

She stayed quiet, and in the shadows he could hardly even see her. He wanted to sleep; he wanted the pain to go away; he wanted, for just a second, to have a moment alone to get his head wrapped around the pain of being shot, the fear of nearly dying and the joy of being alive. A moment. _Just a moment._

"I guess you were right," he said, breaking the silence, since he knew a moment was not what he was going to get.

"Pardon?"

Renko sighed, shifting again. "The warehouse. You said it was odd."

"I did," she agreed.

"You drive like a mad woman." He wondered what happened when he passed out. Last thing he remembered was looking at her tattoos, unfocused black and grey, her hands on her shirt, putting pressure to the wound. And then... nothing.

"They shot you," he heard her voice waver but knew her well enough that if he mentioned it, she'd deny it.

"You think I was targeted?" That got her to step forward. "It's why you're here. If it was random, you wouldn't be."

She scoffed. "You're my partner whether you like me or not."

"I like you," he said with a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

"I annoy you," she said factually.

"This is true," Renko agreed.

"I disobey more orders than I listen to."

"Also true."

"Then why would you like me?"

Renko shrugged. "I just do." Hetty might have shoved them together, but he liked her. Sure she drove him up the wall, but he didn't want to see her hurt; she was his partner. She wasn't much of an undercover, but she was good at the investigative parts of the job, and she was something else behind the wheel of a car or with a gun in her hand. And if nothing else, she had conviction.

"You like me, too," Renko said with a half grin. "Admit it, I've grown on you."

"You got blood on my favourite shirt," she responded. Since she kept her face schooled, he wasn't sure if she was messing with him or actually miffed.

"Angela?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

She took his hand once again. This time it was soft, gentle, reassuring as her thumb grazed just once over his knuckles. "Don't do it again."

"I can't promise anything," Renko responded. The job held no promises of life. You did it because you believed in it, and that, if you died, then you died for something.

She let out a shuddering sigh. "Well... I'll be right beside you if it does," she promised. "For better or worse."

"God, it's like being married," he said with a joking edge to his voice and a smile upon his face.

She kept a straight face. "I swear I'll pull your morphine drip."

"I'm injured."

"You're a smart ass." She smiled just slightly. It was amazing how much it softened the look of her face. "Get some sleep. The team needs you back."

She hid her worry well, but he saw it. He'd seen behind her hard mask and knew he'd have an easier time looking beyond it from now on. Somehow, these days had been a metamorphosis of sorts for them. He watched as she took a seat beside him, her back to the wall, her front facing the door.

"So..." he started.

"Shut up and sleep," she ordered.

He smiled, feeling safe knowing Angela was sitting vigil, and shut his eyes.

::

**This is the prologue for an entire series of Renko fics- Next in series is ****_Eye for an Eye_****.**

**Thanks for reading :)**


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